Site Mobile Navigation

THE WEDDING OF SOLO'S KING

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

Once again, as she has for centuries, the Queen of the South Seas arrived to dance for the King of Solo. The young princes smiled and the old noblemen fretted, and a thundercloud burst, as it had to, above the Susuhunan's palace in Surakarta, central Java.

From his elevated throne in the heart of the vast pavilion, His Serene Highness Pakoe Boewan XII, appeared to be very pleased as he watched the stately and intricate movements of the wedding dance performed by nine graceful members of the royal household.

Accompanied by the rhythms of the gongs and cymbals of the gamelan - a bamboo xylophone - orchestra, the dancers repeated the steps of the bedoyo ketawang.

Solo - or Surakarta, as the city is generally named now - is less than an hour's jet flight from Jakarta. Less well-known than touristic Jogjakarta, some 40 miles away, Solo is a center for traditional Javanese dance and music.

The city has two Academies for the Performing Arts, where visitors may attend rehearsals and performances most days of the year. The two palaces - the Hadinigrat and the Mankunegaran - also have regular dance and gamelan orchestra rehearsals. Guests can check with their hotel's reception desk for information.

One hotel, the Kusuma Sahid Prince (Jl. Asrama 22, P. O. Box 20, Surakarta; phone 0271-6356, telex 22274) used to be the private residence of a prince. Its spacious air- conditioned accommodations cost from $34 for a room for two to $75 for a bungalow. Add 21 percent for service and tax. The Mankunegaran Palace (Istana Mankunegaran, Surakarta; phone 0271-5683) is in the compound of the second palace. Rooms are $30 to $35.

Aside from the hotel restaurants, Indonesian food is available at such places as Timlo Solo, with treats like Indonesian fried chicken, and Asmani, opposite the Mankunegaran Palace.

The most private dance performance in Solo takes place each May during the coronation ritual at the Susuhunan's palace. Only members of the court could attend until the rules were loosened 10 years ago to include a few local and national dignitaries. Foreigners are rarely invited and last May only a handful of Westerners, including the Australian and Dutch Ambassadors to Indonesia, could be seen.

But while the real ceremony is closed, as many as 90 to 100 spectators, many of them students from local dance and music academies and a dozen outsiders, attended the dress rehearsal two days before the dance this year. Potential visitors should write well in advance to the Chamberlain, K. R. T. Harjonegoro, Jl. Kratonan 99, Solo, Central Java, Indonesia.

The present King ascended to the throne in 1945 under the Japanese occupation. When the Dutch colonial administors returned after World War II, they gave him some authority in return for his loyalty to them. Although he was stripped of any power after his country gained sovereignty in 1949, he still plays a symbolic and cultural role.

As a Moslem, he is entitled to four wives. As a Javanese King, he has the right to keep a harem. Consequently - perhaps - he has 64 children, an empty treasury, and a palace that is slowly falling apart for lack of money.

The bedoyo ketawang stems from the 17th-century reign of Sultan Agung, but some say its steps were known as early as the third century. As well as being a ceremonial dance staged for the diversion of the court, it is religious. Above all, it is a wedding dance.

The Queen of the Spirits, so the legend goes, fled in despair to the depths of the South Seas when she discovered she had leprosy. The present King's forefather, Panembahan Senopati, visited the Queen from time to time. She fell in love with him and asked him to stay with her on the throne of the South Seas. He declined, but promised that all his descendants would marry her. When his grandson, Sultan Agung, visited her, he was charmed by the bedoyo ketawang dance performed at her court and invited her to teach it to his own favorite dancers. She promised the Sultan she would come each year to train new bedoyos. The story says that the Queen arrives as rain or a cloud.

This year, guests in formal dress - both Western and Indonesian - arrived at 11 A.M. at the pale blue and marble entrance hall crowned by the Susuhunan's coat of arms and paraded slowly through several courtyards to the tune played by a gamelan orchestra and the salute of the Palace Guard, in black stiff-collared jackets and sarongs.

Open on three sides - the fourth gave on to the royal quarters - the pavilion consisted of a huge painted roof supported by carved and gilded pillars. Under the roof, birds were building nests in the old crystal chandeliers.

The ladies of the court entered discreetly and sat on the floor behind the throne; they wore dodots (sarongs) in the King's colors - ocher, cream and black - and, around their shoulders, the royal sash in bright orange.

After another long moment, the Chamberlain signalled that the Susuhunan was arriving. The gamelan orchestra changed rhythm and Pakoe Boewono XII, an elegant man in his late 50's, appeared on the podium.

The second most important woman of his house (the first being his mother, absent from this year's ceremony) entered and chanted that the princes were about to arrive. The sons, with other men of equal rank in the family, entered wearing costumes similar to those of the guards, with golden krises in their belts. The crawling and wailing woman - some call her the Prime Minister - announced the arrival of the noblemen, who amid much polite fussing finally sat down facing the King.

It was now 1 P.M. and very hot. The guests had turned anything at hand into impromptu fans. The guard had changed, the orchestra had faded away, and the main gamelan with the sacred gong took up the melody.

Dressed as royal brides in dark blue and gold sarongs over a trail dyed red in imitation of the blood of sacrifical animals used in the past, the nine dancers took their measured steps. At each one, a sprinkle of jasmine and rose petals rose. Their hairpieces, rolled into nets of gold and flowers, seemed too heavy for their slender necks, stretching and bowing in demure movements. Old ladies, themselves once bedoyo dancers, surrounded the performers with great care, crawling along to wipe a perspiring back, arrange a twisted train or adjust a slipping dodot.

As the beat grew louder and faster, thunder growled over the royal palace. An instant later, the skies opened. The Queen of the Spirits, the Queen of the South Seas, had arrived for her wedding.

GUNILLA K. KNUTSSON is a staff member of the Paris bureau of The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 1983, on Page 10010030 of the National edition with the headline: THE WEDDING OF SOLO'S KING. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe